scarrabri
Member
Thank you very much for a really good explanation, and I may have to alter the way I think because when I look at a subject say a lady standing in a garden with beautiful flowers and shrubs I would like to first capture the beauty of the lady in focus and then bring the shrubs in to the pic but trying to keep them in focus but slightly back and so on with the flowers with out loosing the beauty of the whole picture by using the blurred look , I haven't got my D70 yet or the ability to see if I could do all this but who knows. best wishes Brian.This is obviously one of those cases where we really need to see the photograph you are asking about, in order to better answer your question!!
Seriously, as others have said, it's kind of an "artsy" thing. Some people like it, some don't. Some types of photos are enhanced by it (portraits, for example); with other photos you want as much of the image as possible to be in sharp focus (e.g., old historic house in front of a mountain with a waterfall).
With some cameras you can have as much or as little of it as you like. Conversely, some cameras (typically with small sensors) and cell phones make it very hard to achieve this effect.
Having said all that: there are times when a bit of background blur does come in handy for very practical reasons. For example, when taking a photo of a cute kid, with a lot of household clutter in the background: if you have shallow depth of field in the photo, the dishes piled on the counter top, or the kids' toys and shoes in the background will be blurred, and won't detract as much from the image of the child.
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Tom
oh by the way it may be one of those cases when seeing the scantily dressed young lady photo may have indeed helped but that photo which is a Calendar hanging up at work on our factory wall is now about 25yrs old and the young lady is young no more and probably a grandma or heading that way which kind of spoils the whole picture lol
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). If you try to keep looking at one point without letting your sight move from it, think of staring contests where your eyes get tired/strained for example, it is somewhat difficult. When you relax this stare you can feel your eyes sort of twitch, what happens is your eye actually moves around what you are looking at rather than remaining focused only on one precise point. This again adds to the impression that everything is in focus all the time with our vision.